When Sparrows Fly
by BBJBS
Summary: Nathan Tagg, a fifteen year old from our universe, is suddenly and inexplicably transported to Equestria. At first, almost everything seems to be relatively normal. But when sparrows fly and a grave threat rears its head, will he be able to help anypony?
1. A Normal Day? Part I: Earth

**When Sparrows Fly **

**Chapter 1**

**A/N: This is the first time outside of English class that I've tried creative writing. This is a HiE (pretty obvious from the description, I guess), with a little bit of self-insert, but as far as I know it's the only HiE self-insert written in third person. I've also changed a few major and minor details of Nathan's life. Anyways, since this is my first shot at fan (or any) fiction, it would be very much appreciated if you would review this. I'm sure that I'll make some mistakes along the way, and if I accidentally have someone sound out of character, feel free to yell at me.**

**Alright, let's get this show on the road!**

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_As Nathan ran through the wide, unpaved streets, he could see the burning buildings ahead of him-and he could hear the... things that were behind him. He had three choices: try and find a way around the fire, turn and face the creatures with the blood-spattered frying pan that had, thus far, kept him alive through the night, or plunge ahead through the flames in an attempt to reach relative safety._  
_He stopped for a moment to mentally review his path. He had seen the blaze from the air; knew that by now it must encircle the whole center of the town. If he tried to look for another way to get through, he would just end up getting killed by the abominations that were following him, and the ones that were sure to show up wherever he went._

_With that option off of the table, he now just had to decide whether to run through the flames, or stand and fight. The frying pan-it had saved his life God only knew how many times in the last few hours, but he heard the beasts approaching and knew that he couldn't possibly fight off that many, not on his own and certainly not with his current weapon. Which left option C._

_He hesitated, knowing that there was a very good chance that he was about to die-but it was tens of millions of times better than the alternative. Making his decision, he started running, sprinting towards that crackling, blazing hot wall against every instinct in his body and-_

Sat straight up in his bed, covered in a cold sweat, his alarm clock-the bane of his existence-blaring its unholy noise. He was just about to blearily smack the snooze button like he did every morning at 7:00, but stopped. He wouldn't be able to get any more rest after a dream like that, and knew it, so he stood up, yawned, and slid the switch to the "off" position.

As he went through his daily before-school ritual-get dressed, put potatoes in microwave, brush teeth while they're cooking-he pondered the dream that had just ended. He hadn't dreamed in well over a year, and never before in his life had he had a dream that... _vivid_. Usually it was just floating around a landscape and hearing things through some weird kind of mental telepathy. This was different, though. He actually felt the heat from the fire, smelled burning... well, he actually wasn't sure what had been burning in the dream, but he had smelled it nonetheless. And he had heard whatever it was that was chasing him, of that he was sure.

When he finished the potatoes, he glanced up at the clock, which read 7:30. "Oh, shit, I'm going to be late," he muttered under his breath. He wouldn't actually, the same thing happened every morning, but he didn't think about that fact as he hurtled around the house grabbing his backpack, lunchbox, iPod, throwing on his shoes, and remembering just before he left that his backpack was empty. He threw his single binder that contained all of his papers, notebooks, and pencils in, then ran outside to the garage and jumped onto his bike. At this point it was 7:45, which was, even for him, behind.

After hurtling through the streets for a few minutes, he arrived at the ugly brick building that was his school. He locked up his bike, then walked in, bracing himself for the day ahead. First he had study hall (why in God's name there was a first hour study hall he had no idea), followed by English, Spanish, algebra, lunch, health, biology, and U.S. history. As the day passed and Nathan stared off into space, bored out of his mind, the thoughts of the dream faded until he barely remembered he had had it. Now, we could go through Nathan's day right by his side, providing moral support from beyond the Wall, but nothing interesting happened, so we're going to skip right on through.

It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and Nate had been beaten senseless by two tests, a pop quiz, a sub (not literally, it was just frustrating dealing with them), and another round against two pounds of homework facing him, he could not wait to get home and pop open a soda. Sweat covered his body as he strained against gravity, shoving his legs down against the pedals to move him just a few more feet, to the crest of the hill. _C'mon, Nathan, just up to this tree,_ he mentally cheered himself on as he finally ended his bitter struggle against the laws of physics.

At that precise moment, 4:03 in the afternoon, Nathan Tagg ceased to exist in the universe as we know it. Had anyone been looking, it would have looked simply as if the teenager had vanished into thin air. The bicycle, with no one to steer or keep its speed up, continued on its journey for several seconds before wobbling and falling over on the wouldn't be reported missing for several hours, but nobody knew when he would be found, if at all.

From Nathan's point of view, he was riding his bike one minute, and the next he was standing straight up. His brain, however, did not realize this for several seconds-except for his ears popping like when on a plane, and he continued making pedaling motions as he had been only seconds ago. He fell flat on his face, amazingly not breaking anything, though it would hurt like hell for a few hours. As he stood up, the first thing that came to mind was, _What the hell just happened?_ The second thing he noticed, after the fact that he had just fallen onto grass on his face when a moment ago he had been riding his bike on the sidewalk, was that he was surrounded by trees in neat rows.

What he saw upon standing up not only shocked him; it made him question his sanity. There, standing right in front of him, were six very oddly colored... ponies. He'd never been much of a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but he had been forced by his mom to watch it with his sister on several occasions, and had taken a moderate interest in it. Which is why he recognized the equines in front of him as the Mane Six.

His jaw not only dropped, it very nearly hit the ground. He wasn't quite speechless, but very nearly, with the only sound coming out of his mouth for almost half a minute being, "Wha-wha-wha," as if he were trying to ask a question but was unable to string together something coherent. The ponies, who were still shocked, seemed to recover relatively quickly, and simply stared, wide-eyed, at the strange creature that had just appeared until it managed to stutter out, "Wha-what the hell just happened?"

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**A/N 2: So, yeah, please review. Also, bonus points if you find the Stephen King reference.**


	2. A Normal Day? Part II: Equestria

When Sparrows Fly

Chapter 2

**A/N: Come on, seriously, only two reviews? I know it isn't perfect, and I welcome, no, I _crave_ some constructive criticism. Anyways, nothing really happens in this chapter. It's pretty much the same as the last one, only it's in Equestria as opposed to Earth. I promise you it'll get interesting in the next chapter.**

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Celestia's sun shone down brightly on Ponyville. The weather pegasi had done a magnificent job: just under eighty degrees, with a cool breeze every now and then. There were dozens of ponies out enjoying the day, of all ages and colors, unicorn, pegasus, and Earth pony alike, and Twilight Sparkle was no exception. For the first time in a year (sadly, this was literal), she had scheduled a day off for herself, as opposed to the random misadventures that very nearly destroyed Ponyville, Equestria, and Twilight's sanity on an almost daily basis.

She inhaled deeply and let out a contented sigh as the warm sun struck her deep purple coat. _Rainbow Dash may do a little too much sleeping on the job, but she sure knows how to make a great day_, she thought as she strolled through the town, not paying attention to where she was going. _Finally, a chance to relax._

At which point the aforementioned random misadventures reasserted their control over reality in the form of a bright pink blur bowling over the hapless unicorn.

"'sgoingtohappensomethingweird..." the local party pony, Pinkie Pie, continued on in this manner for some time, running and bouncing around and, occasionally, hanging upside down in the air with nothing to hold onto.

As opposed to questioning Pinkie's blatant violation of the law of gravity, Twilight just sighed. _So much for that relaxing afternoon_. Despite the fact that the party pony was talking far too rapidly to be understood, Twilight just stood there and listened, occasionally hearing snatches such as, "Itchy ear," and, "Pinkie sense." As the minutes dragged on, the unicorn realized that the earth pony was not about to run out of breath, and she began attempting to interrupt. "Pinkie," she said to no avail. "Pinkie!" she repeated. Again, her friend continued talking. Finally, she was aggravated enough to raise her voice to a yell. "PINKIE!" she shouted.

At long last Pinkie stopped talking, and even stood still. "Twilight!" she scolded. "Didn't you know it's rude to interrupt while somepony's talking?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes, exasperated. Not even bothering with an explanation for her outburst, she said, "I'm sorry for interrupting you Pinkie. Could you say that again, but maybe a bit slower?"

"Sure!" Pinkie exclaimed, as effervescent as ever, and again began to speak rapidly-but not as quickly as before. "I was walking down the street just saying hi to everypony and suddenly my ear got all itchy and you know what that means!"

"Let me guess," the purple mare said in a low voice, her ears twitching. Just because she had come to accept the Pinkie sense didn't mean she had to like it. "Your Pinkie sense is telling you something." At the same time as she said this, the energetic pony said, "My Pinkie sense is telling me something weird is going to happen!"

Pinkie Pie ran up to Twilight and looked her straight in the eye with her head cocked. "Are you reading my mind?" she asked, slowly walking forward, which was pushing the unicorn up against a tree. "Because you said almost the same thing I said at the same time!"

The slightly terrified Twilight Sparkle was, well, slightly terrified, but mostly annoyed. Her one day off in the past year, and on that very day the Pinkie sense just had to make itself known again. Responding to the party pony's allegations that she had been invading her mind, Twilight said, in a tone of voice that quite clearly conveyed her exasperation, "No, Pinkie, I am not reading your mind. You said your ear was itchy, and since physical sensation is how the Pinkie sense manifests, it was kind of obvious."

The earth pony eyed the unicorn for a second or two more, before jumping back and exclaiming, "Okie dokie lokie!" and bounced off.

Twilight trotted to keep up with her. "Do you know what's going to happen?" she asked, to which the pink mare cheerily responded, "Nope!" Twilight, groaning in frustration, then asked, "Well, do you know where it's going to happen?" She finally got something she could work with when Pinkie replied, "Yeah! It's going to be at Sweet Apple Acres in just over an hour!"

"An hour, huh? That gives us just enough time to find the rest of the girls..." she muttered as she and Pinkie continued walking. "Alright, Pinkie, let's go find Fluttershy, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash, then get over to Applejack's before whatever the weird thing is happens."

It only took about twenty minutes to find the rest of their friends. Rarity had been making sure the Cutie Mark Crusaders didn't seriously injure themselves (again) and had run into Fluttershy; they had started gossiping, leaving the CMC free to try something called "extreme dumpster diving". Dash had been very easy to find. Whenever she wasn't working, she was either napping on a cloud or practicing some extreme stunt (and, quite often, spectacularly crashing several times), and since there had been no reports of major property damage all day, that ruled out training. After that, it was just a matter of finding the cloud she was sleeping on-easy enough, it was the only one in the sky-and Pinkie firing off a party cannon, waking her up rather violently as a solid mass of confetti knocked her off of the cloud. She was rather displeased with this, and kept muttering about it on the way to Sweet Apple Acres.

Whem they finally arrived at the farm, the orange earth pony was doing exactly what they had been doing-relaxing. She had finished the day's work, and was now just sitting under a tree with her Stetson pulled down over her eyes. She heard her friends approaching, and went up to greet them.

"Hey girls. What're ya'll doin' here?" she asked.

"Hey, AJ. Pinkie thinks that something very, very weird is going to happen somewhere around here pretty soon." As if on cue, the pink mare started scratching at her ear.

"Hm... alright, if it's gonna show up here anyways we may as well be there to see what it is."

"Thanks, AJ," she said. "Maybe Pinkie should lead the way, since she's the one who can, you know, tell the future to a certain extent."

"Right this way!" she said loudly as the bounced off into the orchard. After a few minutes of walking/bouncing, Pinkie Pie stopped, as did the rest of the Mane 6. "Here we are!" she said, as she pulled out a lawn chair and a box of popcorn from thin air. She jumped onto the chair and brandished the popcorn, saying, "Anypony want some?" The other ponies just looked at Pinkie, and Applejack said, "Uhh... no thanks, Pinkie," looking bewildered.

"Suit yourself!" she replied happily, sticking her muzzle into the box and chowing down.

Rarity was just about to say something to Pinkie about how she went about eating the treat, but was struck silent when some... thing appeared in front of the group. Well, more like two things. One was a smallish black box thingy. The other was some kind of creature. It looked to be about six feet tall, with a very short black mane and a flat face. Besides the mane, it didn't seem to have any kind of fur or hair. It was standing upright on two legs-only for a second, as it promptly fell flat on its face, making some weird motions with its legs, almost as if it had been trying to run. It stood up, at which point it began to make weird noises with its mouth, almost as if it was trying to say something.

The reactions of the Mane 6 were much more varied. Fluttershy, true to her name, squeaked and cowered behind Twilight, who's jaw had dropped as she tried to comprehend what she had just seen, her mind racing. Rarity passed out as soon as she saw the creatures shirt (tie-dye), although she had gotten back on her hooves within twenty seconds. Rainbow Dash had been so stunned that she had forgotten to flap her wings and fallen onto the ground. Applejack's jaw had also dropped, but she had closed her mouth and was now looking at the thing suspiciously, and Pinkie Pie had dropped her popcorn and just sat there with wide eyes, staring at the creature. She was still doing this when it finally managed to get out something coherent.

"Wha-what the hell just happened?"

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**A/N 2: There you go, chapter two. I feel I should warn you, though, that I recently learned about this pesky thing called "character development", and so will have to delegate a few chapters to that. I'm basically making this up as I go along, and some parts are _not _going to be pretty.**

**Anyways, time to talk to the reviewers.**

**Crimson Banner: Thank you first reviewer!**

**LeSpy: Again, thank you. Nice to see someone likes my jokes, although I'm not sure if that was beginners luck or an actual sense of humor. As for your comment about this chapter making or breaking the story, that scared the shit out of me. But it's OK.**

**Oh, also, it was my birthday on Thursday, so please give me a review as a late present!**

**Alright, I have to go. Pinkie Pie managed to break through the Fourth Wall, and I have to find a way to write her back behind it... so long!**


	3. Convergence

**When Sparrows Fly**

** Chapter 3**

**I'm not happy with this chapter. I've been weird while typing all week, so there might be some mistakes, and I've been getting a lot of homework and tests because it's almost the end of the year. I wanted to make it longer, but I also wanted to update it tonight. Eventually, my urge to update won out. Also, I ask that you review. Flame me if you have to, just say something. **

**There's something else I wanted to say. Next week, I have a lot of studying to do, and something like four or five essays I'm going to have to write. I will not be updating for two weeks, unless there's some kind of miracle allowing me to finish Chapter 4. On the bright side, though, it should be longer than the rest of the chapters.**

** Alright, so, I forgot this the last two times and I'd rather not get sued, so I'm going to stress the fact that I don't own _MLP: FiM, _which should be obvious because if I did then this would be canon and the franchise would be ruined forever.**

**On with the show!**

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The six ponies and the human were all staring at each other with the exception of Fluttershy, who was still hiding behind Twilight Sparkle. Nathan, recovering ever-so-slightly, repeated, "What the hell just happened?" and then asked, "Where am I? What the hell's going on here?" He was still a bit stunned, but his brain was rebooting. He looked from the purple unicorn and the light yellow pegasus hiding behind her, to the cyan pegasus who was apparently had not noticed that she had fallen to the ground, over to the white unicorn who still looked a little bit faint, the light orange earth pony who seemed to have recovered from the shock and was now giving him a suspicious glare, and finally the bright pink pony.

Pinkie being Pinkie, she was unable to contain her excitement at the new... well, not exactly pony, but still. Almost instantly, she was out of her chair and in front of the bewildered human, very very quickly moving around, occasionally breaking various laws of physics, rapidly saying, "Wow, I've never seen anypony like you before! I'm Pinkie Pie and I love parties and cupcakes and laughing and what's your name and do you love parties and cupcakes and laughing?" She looked at Nathan wide-eyed and expectant, and also in the middle of hanging upside down in the air... again.

Nathan, as opposed to answering, continued looking from pony to pony until his gaze landed on Twilight Sparkle, at which point he looked back and forth between the unicorn and the earth pony, then said, "She's upside down."

Twilight just looked back at him and said, "Uhh... yes, she is."

"You're real."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"My God," Nathan said, and laughed, "I'm talking to a purple unicorn about a talking pink pony hanging upside down in the middle of the air." At this point he passed out.

Twilight was surprised, but she was quick enough to catch him with her magic and keep him from falling on the ground again.

"AJ," she said, "We should get it inside. Can we take it up to your house?"

"Sure thing," the cowpony responded. "Rainbow Dash, stop lookin' like the Wonderbolts just offered to make you the captain and help us get this thing inside!"

"Huh? Wha? Oh, yeah, sure." The cyan pegasus flew over to the unconscious human, then asked, "Uh, Twilight, can't you just, you know, levitate it?"

"Yes. I don't know why Applejack said that."

The mare in question grinned sheepishly. "Uhh... Rarity, how about ya' get that box thing there?"

The glow of magic enveloped the creature and the box that had appeared with it as the two unicorns levitated them. "Fluttershy," Twilight said, "Have you ever seen an animal like this before?"

"Oh, no," the yellow pegasus replied, "I've never seen anything like it. Oh, I wonder what it is." The mares nodded in agreement. They'd faced dragons, armies of changelings, and Discord, and this was still strange, even by their standards.

Finally they reached Applejack's farm house. Fortunately for them, Big Mac was in Ponyville getting supplies to fix up around the farm, Apple Bloom was still crusading with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, and Granny Smith was visiting an old friend in Appleloosa, so for an hour or two at least there wouldn't be any questions about why they were bringing a potentially hostile, six-foot tall creature none of them had ever even heard about before inside.

Once inside, the creature was put into a chair, and the box placed next to it. The six ponies assembled in Applejack's kitchen, and just looked at each other for a few seconds, except for Pinkie, who was, for whatever reason, attempting to lick one of her eyeballs.

"That was strange." Applejack finally broke the silence.

"No kidding," this time from Rainbow Dash. "Fluttershy, you're sure you don't know what that thing is?" Again, all five of them-four, Pinkie was still trying to lick her eyeball- looked at the pegasus, who just shook her head and said softly, "I hope it's alright, though." At this, Dash turned her attention to Twilight. "You're an egghead, you've must've read something about whatever that thing is!"

"I've never seen anything like it in any of my books. I suppose it might be a changeling, but then what's it impersonating, and how did it just show up here,? However it did it, it wasn't a teleportation spell. In fact, I'm not even sure that it can use magic." The mares contemplated this information.

"Well, I say that whatever it is, we go over there, wake it up, and _make_ it tell us!" Dash started moving towards the doorway into the next room over, her friends following and trying to talk her out of whatever she was planning. It didn't matter, however, as the creature was already awake and beginning to stand up. As soon as it saw them, though, it froze, just looking at them as they did the same. After a short period of tense silence, it simply said, "Oh."

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**Now, to the reviewers.**

**Crimson Banner-Thank you for saying so, and for the review.**

**LeSpy-Nice to know that someone thinks I have a sense of humor and am not, in fact, simply deranged (although this grows more and more likely each day). To be honest, I think that Pinkie's rather easy to write-a dash of random, 14 gigawatts of pure energy, and chuck the laws of physics out the window. I think I have problems with things like dialogue and description. Thank you for the cookie, by the way. My last comment to you: what the hell? I tell you that you scared the shit out of me by saying that the next chapter will make or break the story, then you do it again? Are you trying to give me a nervous breakdown or something? Jeez.**

**So, yeah, for those of you who have and haven't done so, please review. I'm especially looking for tips on how to make my chapters longer. I've never done this before, remember. Like I said, even if it's a flame, it's better than nothing.**

**Oh, and by the way, did any of you notice that Pinkie wasn't in that chapter? It was her stunt double. Have you ever tried to capture her with a butterfly net? Oh well, I've got a trap set in the way of a party. She'll be back next chapter.**

**Good night and good day to you where and when ever you may be reading this!**


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